A court in northern Tajikistan has sentenced a 71-year old woman to 12 years in jail on charges of links to the Islamic State group.

The court in the Sughd region on April 18 also jailed another six members of Mavlyuda Nasriddinova’s family, four of them women, on related charges.

Asia-Plus newspaper cited prosecutors as saying the group, all of them natives of a district near the town of Isfara, were plotting to travel to Syria through Turkey.

A 27-person-strong group from the family allegedly traveled to Almaty, in Kazakhstan, in March 2017 and spent two months there. Later, they moved to Turkey, where they remained for four months.

At the end of the year, 18 people from the group managed to cross the border and reach the Syrian city of Idlib. Another nine members of the family were intercepted by Turkish authorities and handed over to Tajikistan. Of those who were caught, one was underage and another was gravely ill, so they were accordingly released from criminal liability.

According to the Interior Ministry, between 2012 and mid-2016, at least 1,094 Tajik nationals joined the Islamic State group — among them were around 200 women. Authorities claim that around four-fifth of the women only made the trip to Syria to be with their spouses….

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